1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device, a radiographic image capture system, an image processing method, and an image processing program storage medium, and in particular, to an image processing device, a radiographic image capture system, an image processing method, and an image processing program storage medium that generates section (tomographic) images from radiographic images captured by irradiating a subject with radiation from different angles.
2. Description of the Related Art
Radiographic image capture devices that perform radiographic imaging for the purpose of medical diagnosis are conventionally known. A mammography machine has been known as one of such radiographic image capture devices, which images a breast of a subject for the purpose of medical examination including detection and observation of a lesion (such as a tumor or a calcification). In mammography, a technique has been known in which plural radiographic images are obtained by tomosynthesis imaging that captures a breast of a subject from plural different angles, and tomographic images of the breast are obtained by reconstructing the captured plural radiographic images.
As plural tomographic images are obtained in tomosynthesis imaging, there are both a tomographic image in which an object of interest such as a lesion is imaged, and a tomographic image in which the object of interest is not imaged. Therefore, a user such as a doctor who performs detection or observation of a lesion with respect to a subject needs to interpret or read the plural tomographic images by switching them one by one, which requires cumbersome operations compared with a case of reading a two-dimensional image and may take a long time for the interpretation.
In this regard, techniques for obtaining tomographic images or radiographic images in which an object of interest is imaged have been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2010-131170 discloses a technique of generating and displaying tomographic images including a site of interest based on position information of the site of interest acquired from stereo images or ultrasonic images. JP-A No. 2010-162154 discloses a technique of identifying an image of a region corresponding to a region of interest from plural radiographic images, based on three-dimensional (3D) coordinates of the region of interest in a radiographic image, which has been input by a user.
Generally, medical examination using tomographic images obtained by tomosynthesis imaging is performed by interpreting a single two-dimensional image and the tomographic images obtained by tomosynthesis imaging.